SUNSET

 

 

It was the end of the day, the end of all the days, and there was a vague sense of fading light peeking through grey clouds. A girl slept on the rattan chair, curled up like a cat. She was dreaming, but so was I.

I did not really know what she was. What I was. You will never know what is right there appearing before you. The lover who explores every inch of the body of their beloved or the serial killer who tears it apart; neither will ever find what they are looking for. The seeker will never find the no-thing the speakers hint at, as if it is waiting in the next room like an unwrapped present. And there is no present, any more than a past or future.

The woods have secrets, that's what the old man who came up to do some woodwork said. He made a few repairs, then he carved an ivy covered tree in the main cabin post. The seekers will love it when the next retreat comes, though some will attribute mystical meaning to it he never intended. But no one ever intends, and nothing has meaning. Wow. Such blanket declarative statements this Miranda thingie seems to make, unchosen and unbidden as they are. What foolishness.

The woodcarver spoke to me briefly. I could hardly understand his accent, but maybe it is just words that I have trouble understanding. When they are written they seem to be deciphered, but speech is becoming as foreign for me as for the trees. Yet we both sing in the wind, the trees and me.

The girl is like Alice. She has fallen down the rabbit hole. I may be her mad hatter, Or the Queen taking her head. But no one is any one to no one at all. It really is that simple, but the stories color the pages that would otherwise be blank, like the tales of forest fairies the sleeping girl tells when she is seemingly awake.

She grew up with them, believing in fairies and fairy tales, and now has only the tales, unbelieved. But she said yesterday, "oh, we are all fairy tales." And again today when she woke briefly, stretched like a cat, looked outside and proclaimed, "It’s a dreich day. Fairie folk we are." Then curled up impossibly and went back to dreams.

Dreams. Waking. All there is and is not. The end of the day, a day like any other, yet no other ever appeared at all. Or ever will. Neither time nor timeless, well, you know how it goes. Hopefully someone does, but no...no one knows...or needs to know.

The dew forms bubbles on the grass. If you look closely, they are glistening mirrors reflecting all that is and never was, all that is me and nothing at all. The girl sleeps and dreams, I walk and dream, life sings and dreams, darkness appears to fall like a curtain closing on yet one more act in the act-less ballet of love and life and all the imaginary words so loved by imaginary characters....and I close my eyes and disappear and yet here we are, my beloveds, only always and nevermore. 💓